Presentation Information
[P3-18]Rock with Me: How Social Interaction Shapes Spontaneous Motor Tempo in Baboons’ stone rubbing
*Siham Bouziane1, Anne Bobin-Bègue3, Jennifer T Coull1, Adrien Meguerditchian1,2 (1. Centre de Recherche en Psychologie et Neurosciences (France), 2. Station de Primatologie-Celphedia UAR846 CNRS - Rousset France (France), 3. Laboratoire Éthologie Cognition Développement, Paris-Nanterre, France (France))
Keywords:
Rhythms,Non-Human Primates,Ethology,Spontaneous motor tempo,Social interactions
Humans have developed particularly advanced rhythmic abilities compared to other animal species, including non-human primates (NHPs), our closest relatives. More specifically, a finding that has sparked growing interest in the scientific community is that NHPs often struggle to temporally synchronize with an external (usually artificial) stimulus. However, the ability to synchronize is essential in social interactions. Several studies suggest synchronization ability may depend on an individual endogenous variable: the spontaneous motor tempo (SMT), which is the spontaneous production of a rhythm in the absence of an external stimulus. SMT in either the lab or the wild remains largely undocumented in NHPs. Out of the 19 Guinea baboons (Papio papio) living in their social group in an outdoor park, 17 displayed a naturally rhythmic behavior not yet described in this species: stone rubbing. We manually coded videos of individuals that exhibited stone-rubbing behavior by annotating each action cycle (endpoints of forward and return strokes). Then we extracted inter-movement intervals and calculated movement frequency, to derive an estimate of the SMT specific to each individual. We then investigated the influence of the presence of conspecifics engaged in the same rhythmic stone-rubbing behavior on individual SMT, by comparing solitary versus group contexts. Our results reveal that individuals exhibit distinct SMTs, and that these tempos are influenced by the presence of conspecifics. More interestingly, some individuals seem to adjust their rhythmic tempo to their partner's one. Our findings represent the first description of SMT in this primate species and show that baboons’ individual natural tempo is flexible and is modulated by social context. Altogether, our results indicate that studying natural behavior in animals could help broaden our understanding of the evolutionary origins of human rhythmic abilities.